[What do we think of citizen cavalry archers.]

I have observed only one player so far make out of (non-camel) mounted archers successfully and this was none other than @Philip the Swaggerless. I spectated him for 2 games (TGs) and on the second one his enemy (spartans) was slowed down by the fluid mass of cav archers, but eventually realized he could tank the damage and simply use CS spearmen push the cav archers all the way back to their base before taking significant losses. At Phil's base, the sparta player simply brought in rams and destroyed the base while the cav archers had to stand aside and gradually deal damage to the mass of melee units.

It seems, like with infantry archers, that they could be greatly improved by the implementation of "area attack" or "attack-ground". This would allow them to use their full range and for cav archers, maneuverability, to attack the optimal areas of the enemy army, rather than only the strong melee in front.

[How to make a differential.]

hehe XD maf OP

I am about to do a bunch of these here differential equations, I can't wait.

[berries/hunt balancing changes for a26 "food lottery"]

@LetswaveaBook do you think a map generation mechanism that adds in berries or hunt if there would otherwise be none is a good solution?

It is worth noting that 2 berries vs 1 (including spawn) is a bigger advantage than 3 berries vs 2, that (2v1) is the worst case scenario that I think should be avoided. 

[berries/hunt balancing changes for a26 "food lottery"]

@chrstgtr perhaps you are right about it being more important. Given that all civs have their power spikes at the same time and in an abrupt manner, a 30-40 second lead can make a bigger difference, with players often sending 5-6 rams on their first attack. I would be a fan of bringing ram training back to the fort and eliminating the siege workshop for some civs. If someone was going to spawn with 0 extra hunt and 0 extra berries, then the feature would automatically spawn them 50% chance a berry group and 50% chance a hunt group, it is not as severe as other map balancing things, but it prevents rock-bottom which is actually quite frequent.

Another issue is champions (of which some are more OP than others). In the past (a23), champions were almost never viable, in a24 there was not enough metal to make champions even if they were viable then. Now, champions are viable and there is metal to make them. What I dislike in a25 is how easy it is to mass champions, and how helpless a player is after an enemy has done that. I say this as someone who has massed champions frequently before, and found it too cheesy/easy. I think champions should have no unlock if you train them from fortress or champion training building (mess hall/ gymnasium type thing), and that current unlock techs for training champions in barracks/ stable should be much more expensive (+500 wood +400 metal) and train champions at a slower speed than forts. Ideally, it would be practical to train a few champions from forts/unique building but takes a lot longer to train them from barracks or stables. This would also make the unique buildings more significant as an actual advantage rather than disadvantage.

[berries/hunt balancing changes for a26 "food lottery"]

frequently I notice that players spawn without extra hunt or extra berries. I do not think that all players should have equal resources 100% of the time, but it should be roughly equal. Keep in mind the location of the hunt and berries also matters. Once each player has 2 hunts or two berries, additional ones are less important. The main problematic case is the one where there is neither extra berries nor extra hunt, this puts the player at a serious disadvantage. I think adding some mechanism to prevent a player from hitting rock bottom in food luck would be good enough to prevent the worst of the issue.

I am not sure whether the food resources "lottery" has gotten more extreme since a23, a24 or whether it has simply become more important.

[Sacred places / Sites [ Gaia - Neutral stuff]]

On 11/10/2021 at 2:49 PM, Lion.Kanzen said:

most about the design of AoE IV

I think it is ok to have this condition, but it is good that they can only be captured by monks, but cancelled by any enemy unit who kills the monks. It makes map control a little more important when there are so many resource generation mechanics in AoE4 that otherwise would not require you to have much map control. By far the worst victory condition is landmark victory, where a player just builds trebuchets and snipes the enemy landmarks (which can sometimes be only 3-4 buildings) faster than the enemy can repair them. I watched SOTL play a AoE4 4v4 and he was winning but then was eliminated because he did not notice his landmarks were being destroyed. 

My favorite features of AoE4 are the garrisonable and upgradeable walls and upgradeable castles. Another cool thing is the weapon based unit upgrades and melee unit charging. To me it is so strange that they made all of these nice realism/gameplay improvement features but then decided to make all projectiles a 100% hit probability, I feel that it is wasting all of the effort they put into the other features in the game to make projectiles so comedically simple. Without accuracy/ projectile simulation, ranged units are just melee units with long attack range, like extremely long pikes that just do a small amount of damage.

Some people argue that inaccuracy is RNG, but in my opinion this is fine because the outcome is still controllable by the player. I argue that there is much less skill in knowing exactly how long your scout can spend under a TC before dying, rather than a skill-based intuition made up of your estimate of your enemies' accuracy upgrades/willingness to garrison to increase arrows/how much of the TC you need to see/how much of a threat you want your scout to be. Another example is if you have a knight looking to kill vills and it encounters X amount of archers, you can't run away because you know X amount of archers will one-shot your knight, so you just look away and accept the knight is dead even before the archers shoot. The inaccuracy does not have to be as extreme as AoE2, but it should at least be present in game.

 

[Res Gestae Mod]

2 hours ago, KKaslana said:

Hi @BreakfastBurrito_007! It's nice to have attack-ground functionality in 0ad, though I don't think it should be used in vanilla or mods depicting the same historical period, since there wasn't any AOE weapon available: 0ad archers can't do real AOE damage, and if you use them to attack-ground, it would be worse than attackmove, because some arrows will be wasted on the same target (maybe it should be possible to actually attack a zone rather than a point). Catapult dealing AOE damage isn't historically accurate either. Also the projectiles are too fast for attack-ground to make sense.

But if someone wants to make 0ad mods with wizards, dragons, howitzers or stealth bombers, that will be awesome.

Yea, the goal it to make it an “attack-zone” controllable by the player. In a25 right now there is a huge emphasis on things that can create or overcome a meatshield. In that regard the worst units are archers and spearmen. This would not be problematic if there was a way for ranged units to shoot over incoming melee, in alpha 25 right now there is no feasible way for ranged units to target enemies besides the closest ones. For example: archers are worse than skirmishers because skirmishers can kill the melee in the middle first; if archers were able to use attack-ground (or attack-zone) then they would be able to make use of their range.

[Res Gestae Mod]

@KKaslana There has been talk about attack-ground improving unit balance as well as diversifying and improving battle skill. there is https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1971. I have talked to @Yekaterina about it being put in a mod already, but I wonder if this is a possible good mod to add it to?

also Hi nagasushi! its been a while

[Age of Empires IV]

4 hours ago, Radiotraining said:

this is looking like the most interesting civ so far! 

 

Key takeways (to me):

- Reward of high risk strategies (let's see how it translates in the game, but is an interesting indicator of how the civilization has been set)

- the "Khan". Very interesting, brings some special bonuses like a hero, but is still a common unit

- "Yam network" tech to improve speed in your area: that's something been discussed for the Romans in 0ad and I find the concept really interesting in my opinion!

 

My main concern is how annoying it will be to fight mangudai when they are faster than most other units in the game and able to attack while moving while hitting 100% of their shots (each arrow is laser-guided). I feel this will lead to situations where the mangudai are always able to do damage and always able to avoid damage.

I feel the projectile (even bombard cannon) 100% accuracy will make the game very shallow and eventually boring. Right now the "landmark victory" means all you need to do is snipe 4-5 buildings to win the game, even if your enemy is easily capable of beating you after the loss of those buildings.

[[a25] Merc Cav (Carthage + replay)]

 @Dizaka You know they do it out of fear though! XD

[[a25] Merc Cav (Carthage + replay)]

@Dizaka just choose kush instead lol. Its not op, but it sure is epic.

[Elephants Too Strong Against Stone Walls]

4 hours ago, alre said:

if that was to be added, I'd make it for all champions. sele for example have access to pike champions, who are much more effective meatshields than eles (spear champions are too, although I must reconsider: eles are also quite good meatshields). massing champions has been an issue in this alpha.

I wouldn't think that massing mercs has been an issue in itself, because sword cav is usually massed by gaul players too. it's just that sword cav is OP, and that mercs are too strong for their price.

I agree that it is too easy to mass champions. I think they should be added with no unlock to fortresses and the unlock for stable/ barrack should cost a lot more food some wood and metal. This way, it would be harder to plan to mass champions as you may have to forego some back-up eco, some military upgrades, or some time. By then an enemy could have killed you with other units. Adding them with no unlock from the fortress would help players to train a few and use them wisely rather than massing and killing everything.
 

Implementing some way to train rank 2/3 units in p3 (at increased food/wood for rank 2 and +10 further metal for rank 3) for different civs/units should also help bridge the gap between CS and champion units. 

Attack-ground should also help reduce the over-importance of meat shielding.

[Are Stone Towers Too Powerful?]

@

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

There should be an anti-cavalry technology that gives defense bonuses to the tower and walls.

I agree with this, but I think it would be better to just give an inherent .3x counter vs palisades to melee cavalry, this way, palisades actually offer a more significant protection vs cavalry and will allow a smart player to position his units and palisades in such a way as to prevent cavalry from going in. I also think there should be some adjustments made to palisade and stone wall placement to make it easier to seal off an area, like going between houses or barracks.

 

[Elephants Too Strong Against Stone Walls]

1 hour ago, Dasaavawar said:

Then around 40 of his elephants

what a mad lad! thats a lot of eles @Dizaka

[Elephants Too Strong Against Stone Walls]

24 minutes ago, alre said:

you managed to get your cavalry circled by elephants? it's like turles outmanouvring rabbits. Seriously though, I don't think this is a fight you'd think elephants should lose, in general.

Elephants are nicely countered by ranged troops, less so than the equivalent resource value in champion infantry, for instance. Since in MP games you generally see a lot of ranged troops (especially OP javeliners), competitive player almost never use elephants in this last alpha. I guess eles could be nerfed, but ranged troops should be nerfed first.

alre, the main drawback to eles is that they usually come from archer civs. One of the strongest ele civs this alpha is seleucids because eles can back an army that is already strong in dps. Even if all their skirms are shooting your eles, your skirms/melee will be killing their skirms. Also, if you have metal left over, it is easy to keep making eles since all they require is food and metal.

[Disruptive players not welcome in my hosted games - Norse_Harold's rules]

5 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

Spectators must speak English only in global chat and avoid disrupting the game

Why this rule?

Also, you know you can just use /ban and get rid of any player you want to ban.

[Current climate change]

4 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

If it would operate 1000 years, we would need to find a cube with sides of 10 meters to store it

That does not sound that bad to me, but I guess in the netherlands, volume comes at a premium. From what I heard, the US just stores all the waste on site, in temporary containers (really dumb).

As for storage, I think people have to just start building/digging these storage facilities if they want to keep having nuclear power. Otherwise it will only be more and more problematic as time goes on.

[Current climate change]

I wonder if miniature reactors are an improvement in safety over the big ones?

 

[All Civilizations are my favorite.]

@Freagarach That sounds great, to create the rank 2/rank 3 option from barracks. Ideally they would also raise in cost to become +30% f,w for rank 2. And then plus 10 metal from rank 2 to 3. We don’t want to make mercenaries or skiritai commando useless so we should be careful about: the cost, the number of available units per civ who can be trained rank 2 or rank 3, and the train time for that.

 

[All Civilizations are my favorite.]

5 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Also when I rushed a bit and at the moment I considered that my cavalry would no longer be able to cause casualties, I tried during some game to garrison them. The cavalry gain about 25% in value after 150 seconds of garrisoning, which seems as efficient as hunting in the middle of the map. Though garrisoning for xp seems reasonable, in many cases in hindsight it would have been better to have them patrol (or hunt) in the neutral territory to spot any attacks or expansions.

I have thought about it some more and I realize that instead of making a whole new building just for training, it would be easier to add functionality to the barracks/stable to facilitate this change.

Do you think that there should be a training cost rate?

My thinking is you could garrison and make some kind of purchase that speeds up the training without making an upgrade to a particular unit.

Perhaps the simplest and least gimmicky way to do it would be garrisoning the units and clicking a "train" button in the barracks that just adds x amount of xp to the units over time, with some kind of sound signal when it is done. The things to address would be how much it should cost (Probably double the food cost and add some metal cost for cavalry or elephants or priests) and how much faster training should be than when it is done without the "train" button. 

Another way to do it could be to have the button display what rank the units will be when done and calculate the price needed to bring all of those units to that rank. 

I think for the final time to train, it should not be fast enough that defending players can simply react by doing this and be saved by it. Perhaps 30 seconds for rank 1 to rank 2 and 45 seconds for rank 2 to rank 3 would be good.

I hope this sounds more reasonable for gameplay.

[All Civilizations are my favorite.]

18 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

People have been trying to bridge the gap between champions and CS for a long time. I think this is necessary because not all civs will have a champion counter to an enemy champion unit. If a player is able to "invest" in their CS, then there is more room for military unit improvement beyond the robotic purchase of all the blacksmith upgrades. 

I liked @wowgetoffyourcellphone's idea because of the way you could choose a unit to upgrade and because of its ability to help differentiate civs. Also, if you wanted to go back to training rank 1 units for eco, you could not.

I must say that I like this idea more, because it is a more direct player choice that "adds" training onto units after they come out of production building. There is much less abusability with this mechanism than with purchasing a rank 2 or rank 3 upgrade that then affects the unit cost. A player could get all the units and then purchase the upgrades, so they would then have a powerful army without having to pay very much of the rank 2-altered unit cost.

I have a few issues with barracks/stable unit training. It is a slow mechanic that has no extra cost and makes players lazy with how they upgrade their units. It is rarely used, and it is also hard to tell how much xp/rank the units inside have gained.

Some ideas of mine about the training building:

• 3 facilities: cavalry training, ranged infantry training, melee infantry training. 300 stone 300 wood cost and footprint size of military colony.
• All civs should have access to these but they should have different amounts of available rank limits for different units. 
• garrison limit of 20, garrisoned units train
• rank 3 limit should be allowed in phase 3 unless it could become unique ability of some civ(s)
• rate food cost per unit they gotta eat more while training) flat metal cost for operating whole facility (paying the instructors).
• rank 1-->2 food rate per unit:0.25 food/s. rank 2-->3: 0.5 food/s. instructor cost for rank 1-->2 and 2-->3 5 metal per second (cavalry have double the food rate cost)
• rank 0 to rank 1 in 45s, rank 2 to 3 in 1.5 minute (half-upgraded units stop early, but do not effect cost rates)
• garrison units (all of 1 type) click train button, they go to next rank (some kind of applause sound when they are done training)
• healers and elephants would garrison in their own training buildings (maybe change garrison limit for ele stable) and require 10 metal cost per second per facility as well as 2 food per second per unit cost.
• ideas for civ bonuses: reduced time to train, buildable in phase 1, some civ has 1.5x garrison space per training building

 

I feel this would be a great macro element to add to the game and give players a lot of opportunities to use this for a variety of strategies. It would also help bridge the power divide between champions and CS. 

@RadiotrainingTo be fair, I don't see the need to have special building animations per unit. The artwork could just mean taking a stable or barracks, enlarging it, and adding some key distinguishing features.

@Dizaka @chrstgtr@ValihrAnt@Yekaterina@borg- @Palaiologos What do you think? could this be a good feature that you would imagine using?

[All Civilizations are my favorite.]

44 minutes ago, alre said:

such building could simply take the place of barracks, that are quite anachronistic, since people in antiquity would generally train for war in the open, often not away from home. just saying.

These would probably be people who are interested in war, like champions, heros, gladiators, not ordinary citizens who see no reason to be a warrior. For example, I am not preparing for world war 3 right now. Ordinary people would be forced into service and told how to use a weapon, perhaps receive some group training. 

Barracks/ stable is just a convenient way to show military unit creation. Because of this, I think it is quite reasonable historically to have a training area, even if these would be makeshift in real life and not dedicated facilities.

 

 

[All Civilizations are my favorite.]

6 hours ago, Phalanx said:

Heres an idea that could possibly be more engaging for the player: Make a new building that is a small training area with dummies and stuff like that.  So currently units can be garrisoned in a barracks to gain levels, but that is not very engaging, the player doesn't SEE this happening. So a training area building with say, 10 training posts. Citizen soldiers can be tasked on these buildings and will gain xp while visibly attacking the dummies and training.  So then training and level techs can have a place in this new training area that increase training speed or maybe even increase max level. For example, say that you can't train a unit to elite level at the training arena without a city phase level tech, or what have you.  

Basically its a more engaging way to show unit training as opposed to just hiding them in the barracks, and provides a building specifically for training techs and more accentuates the fact that training is an option for players.  Because the fact that you can garrison units in the barracks to train is not really readily understandable to a new player.

People have been trying to bridge the gap between champions and CS for a long time. I think this is necessary because not all civs will have a champion counter to an enemy champion unit. If a player is able to "invest" in their CS, then there is more room for military unit improvement beyond the robotic purchase of all the blacksmith upgrades. 

I liked @wowgetoffyourcellphone's idea because of the way you could choose a unit to upgrade and because of its ability to help differentiate civs. Also, if you wanted to go back to training rank 1 units for eco, you could not.

I must say that I like this idea more, because it is a more direct player choice that "adds" training onto units after they come out of production building. There is much less abusability with this mechanism than with purchasing a rank 2 or rank 3 upgrade that then affects the unit cost. A player could get all the units and then purchase the upgrades, so they would then have a powerful army without having to pay very much of the rank 2-altered unit cost.

I have a few issues with barracks/stable unit training. It is a slow mechanic that has no extra cost and makes players lazy with how they upgrade their units. It is rarely used, and it is also hard to tell how much xp/rank the units inside have gained.

Some ideas of mine about the training building:

• 3 facilities: cavalry training, ranged infantry training, melee infantry training. 300 stone 300 wood cost and footprint size of military colony.
• All civs should have access to these but they should have different amounts of available rank limits for different units. 
• garrison limit of 20, garrisoned units train
• rank 3 limit should be allowed in phase 3 unless it could become unique ability of some civ(s)
• rate food cost per unit they gotta eat more while training) flat metal cost for operating whole facility (paying the instructors).
• rank 1-->2 food rate per unit:0.25 food/s. rank 2-->3: 0.5 food/s. instructor cost for rank 1-->2 and 2-->3 5 metal per second (cavalry have double the food rate cost)
• rank 0 to rank 1 in 45s, rank 2 to 3 in 1.5 minute (half-upgraded units stop early, but do not effect cost rates)
• garrison units (all of 1 type) click train button, they go to next rank (some kind of applause sound when they are done training)
• healers and elephants would garrison in their own training buildings (maybe change garrison limit for ele stable) and require 10 metal cost per second per facility as well as 2 food per second per unit cost.
• ideas for civ bonuses: reduced time to train, buildable in phase 1, some civ has 1.5x garrison space per training building

 

I feel this would be a great macro element to add to the game and give players a lot of opportunities to use this for a variety of strategies. It would also help bridge the power divide between champions and CS. 

@RadiotrainingTo be fair, I don't see the need to have special building animations per unit. The artwork could just mean taking a stable or barracks, enlarging it, and adding some key distinguishing features.

[Economy bonus ideas]

1 hour ago, alre said:

In any case, persians also have unique techs for raising armies faster (plus the population bonus), I still think romans are quite lacking in this matter

In a24, persians are much slower to attack usually, since they would usually want cavalry and their economic advantage is only present in the late-game. Again, I think being a highly urban civilization would mean it is a contender not to have that bonus, since urbanization mostly relates to residences purposes built to contain people. A more rural civ or a civ that historically had to abandon its cities every now and then would be a great contender, because those storehouses/farmsteads would be needed to house the excess population once the city was evacuated.

[Are Stone Towers Too Powerful?]

At this point, I like the way towers work. You can build them strategically to deny resources and you can prevent an enemy from having a long term presence underneath it. The towers do not function to deny entry to the area that they can shoot because they don’t kill units fast enough.